Last edited by kimball492; 03-03-2017 at 01:32 AM.
Interesting. Radial make a great range of products. A lot of people I know use them.
I wasn't quite sure at first exactly what it was meant to do, but now I see. It's less of an amp simulator than a cab simulator; for example there are no standard tone knobs, drive or volume knobs like you'd expect to see on an amp sim. Instead it takes the output from your pedal board and makes it sound like the output is from a miked amp, but all the tone, drive and volume levels are determined by your pedals.
As an awful lot of people have invested a lot of money in their boutique pedal collection, so if there's the need for silent playing on stage and after spending $3k or more on a large pedal board set-up you probably don't want to then go and buy a Boss or Line 6 multi-FX/amp sim product and do it all in the box. You might be more tempted by something like a Kemper, but they are a lot of money and if the Radial product does the job for around 1/10th the price, then why not use it? It's also useful as one of those 'get out of jail' boxes if you have an amp malfunction on stage and you have a suitable PA (with monitoring) to plug into.
It's not going to be much help to the guitar-straight-into-amp brigade as it's not going to behave or react to volume knob adjustments like an old Fender Tweed amp, so a full-on amp simulator is probably the best back-up choice here, but for those with pedal boards, its well worth a look.
It's also a very good DI box, so good when recording for taking a DI signal (not a clean one as it's positioned at the end of the signal chain) to allow re-amping - either in software (using the sound of your own pedals to feed an amp sim) or back out to another physical amp.
Radial products are never the cheapest of their type out there, but they are well engineered and robust. Looks like the price for this one is around £200 in the UK, so should be A$320ish. But if you've got 8 or 10 boutique pedals that cost between A$200-$400, it's not a lot to spend to have a useful piece of kit that could be an ear-saver or gig-saver.
I could definitely use something like this......hmmmmm
Current:
GTH-1
Completed:
AST-1FB
First Act ME276 (resurrected curb-side find)
ES-5V
Scratchie lapsteel
Custom ST-1 12 String
JBA-4
TL-1TB
Scratch Lapsteel
Meinl DIY Cajon
Cigar Box lap steel
Wishing:
Baritone
Open D/Standard Double 6 twin neck
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